Posts Tagged ‘us auto jobs’

Mercedes is one of the automakers getting set to expand U.S. operations and create new jobs.

If you’re looking for a job at an auto assembly plant, hang tight, there will be thousands of new openings over the next several years. But for now, you might want to look elsewhere.

The auto industry was one of the sparks that helped set fire to the U.S. economy after the Great Recession, and since just the beginning of the year, manufacturers ranging BMW to Volvo have announced plans to add at least 12,000 new jobs as they add new U.S. assembly plants or expand existing ones.

GM CEO Dan Akerson said the government took the same risks as other investors.

Soon-to-retire General Motors Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson has said thanks, but no thanks, to suggestions the now-profitable automaker should pay back the roughly $10 billion the U.S. Treasury is believed to have lost on its 2009 bailout of the then-bankrupt automaker.

Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Akerson told his audience that the government took a risk like any other investor – including those wiped out when GM filed for Chapter 11 protection. And, the CEO stressed, the bailout was far less expensive than the tens of billions of dollars in lost taxes and other revenues that would have been lost if GM had gone out of business.

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“I would not accept the premise that this was a bad deal,” said Akerson, who plans to retire on January 15, when his protégé Mary Barra becomes the first woman CEO at a major auto manufacturer. “The die was cast” when the government decided to take shares rather than make its investment in the form of a loan, Akerson emphasized.

The federal government bailout of General Motors spared at least 1.2 million U.S. jobs, according to a new report – and even though taxpayers will lose more than $9 billion on the rescue effort, that was more than offset by nearly $40 billion in additional taxes generated in just the year the government pulled the beleaguered automaker out of bankruptcy in 2009.

The white House has been rapidly selling off its final shares in what critics have called “Government Motors,” and expects to be completely out of the automotive business by the end of this month. The most recent Washington forecast indicated taxpayers could lose $9.7 billion on the bailout, though the rapid run-up in GM stock this past month could trim that loss, analysts note.

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“Any complete cost-benefit assessment of the federal assistance to GM in its restructuring must consider the total net returns to the public investment,” declared authors Sean McAlinden and Debra Maranger Menk, in the study, “The Effect on the U.S. Economy of the Successful Restructuring of General Motors,” released today by the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research, or CAR.

Ford Motor Co.’s comeback slowed in the fourth quarter as a 21% decline in core automotive business drove down operating profits at a time when the overall U.S. auto industry was showing signs of renewed strength.

For the full year, the second largest of the Detroit automakers reported a pre-tax operating profit of $8.8 billion, an increase of $463 million from a year ago, as strong performances in North America and Ford Credit offset challenges in other parts of the world, the company said. This marks the company’s third year in a row of improving annual operating profits.

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“We delivered strong results for the full year as we continued to serve our customers around the world with best-in-class vehicles and made progress toward our mid-decade goals,” said Alan Mulally, Ford president and CEO. “Despite the continued uncertainty in the external environment, the strength of our North American and Ford Credit operations allows us to continue to invest for future growth and develop outstanding products with segment-leading quality, fuel efficiency, safety, smart design and value,” he said.